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Are you now or have you ever been a TERF?

Originally published at The New Statesman

At the weekend a letter was published in the Observer, signed by 130 people, which called for open debate in universities and criticised the silencing or ‘no platforming’ of people whose views are deemed transphobic or whorephobic. Two high-profile signatories, Mary Beard and Peter Tatchell, were immediately deluged with abuse and threats. Both ended up making statements (Beard on her blog, and Tatchell to Pink News) in which they reiterated their support for the principle of free speech, but took pains to distance themselves from the TERFs (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’) who are the main targets of the tactics the letter criticised. ‘Don’t confuse me with those people’, was the message. ‘I defend their right to express their views, but I find those views as repulsive as you do’.

Reading these statements, I couldn’t help thinking about the ending of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where Winston pleads with his torturers to do it to his lover Julia, not to him. It’s cowardly, but as a reader you understand it; you recognize that in his position you would probably do the same. In this context it’s a sign of the effectiveness of the McCarthyist tactics deployed by certain trans activists. On Twitter there is a blacklist, called the ‘blockbot’, which includes the names of Twitter users who have been reported for tweeting something that someone considers suspect, along with the reasons for their inclusion. Anyone can inspect the list if they want to know who the TERFs are, and there is nothing to prevent them from passing that information on. If you work in academe, like Mary Beard, or you’re a veteran LGBT activist like Peter Tatchell, you really don’t want to be on that list. The two of them were victims of another classic McCarthyist tactic, guilt by association. And they responded by trying to dissociate themselves, not only from the TERFs who had been no-platformed, but also from any TERFs who may have been lurking among the other signatories to the letter.